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My picks and grading are from experience and testing of these engines over the last 13 years so this compilation takes in the zone type game engines and the open world infinitely large world design engines. I take into account complexity of the development pipeline and the price.

Top two picks for indies is kind of a toss up because one engine has more features in pipeline but the other has a better network scalability. The others picks in order are graded as complexity increases for their requirements

Top two picks for me. (1 and 2)

I wanted to be able to build a infinitely large world and I wanted the engine to be capable of performing at a reasonably good level.

Esenthel Engine. – Has so many features that can’t list them all. Worth mentioning here is unlimited world size, destructible environment, advance path finding. Has a very indie friendly art pipeline and very rapid development cycle. Probably the best engine on the market for the investment of any indie developer games for any type of game.

The down side of this engine is that it requires C++ and to make a MMORPG you need to make a better network infrastructure. The one that is developed will work but it does not have the capability of enterprise level connections. It has a CScript syntax editor but the raw power of C++ makes this one probably the best engine for the 100 buck investment. With the new EE2 editor it is designed to make collaborative editing a lot simpler and faster.

BigWorlds Indie. – You need to be knowledgeable of Python programming language but it offers the gridded world that is infinitely large. The server structure is a enterprise level grid design so scalability is based on the number of cores available you can achieve 100,000+ CCU with the right number of cores to a single world design. It has MySQL database for indies now which makes it capable of handling enterprise level connections. It is more fault tolerant than others because the persistence can be put into the database.

Down side of this engine is that the support is very minimal unless you display a degree of skill to the engine developers. They are no longer limiting you to 10K subscribers as far as I know but you don’t have any means to use any external 3rd party add-ons and you have the watermark on your client. They want you to buy the commercial package but if you show that your game has potential they will work to help ya. The 10% loyalty cost.

Unity offers a wide range of features and has a very active community. Offers a infinitely large world design with the pro package which has background streaming. With the right packaged network code you can build a MMORPG. Down side of this one is the amount of interfacing you have to do in order to make a MMO ready game.

This engine is great and has all the bells and whistles for any game maker. Lots of features.

Downside is the lack of gridding out your worlds. The ridiculous 30% royalty which kills your profits. The world build cycle is difficult and time consuming and art pipeline requires expensive external editors for assets. (Max/Maya) Requires cloud computing so if it stops like others have in the past you’re screwed unless someone picks it up under MIT, GPL or some form of licensing.

Multiverse is open source under MIT license now. Much like Hero except not cloud dependent. In its prime this engine was a good choice but it is dated now. The new developers are making changes and trying to make it better so stay tuned there if you have some serious interest in the future. I personally had a world up and fully functional in 2009 with this engine. Very easy to work with but like I said very dated.

Open source under Alfrado LGPL. Has a shard design with limited number of CCU but is fully functional engine. You have to be highly knowledgeable in C++, LUA and MySQL to use this one. I did some minor code fixes and got this functional a couple years ago and had a functional demo world up and running. Lots of nice things you can do with this engine.

NOTE: The game you make is the database and the scripts which are your property but if you use any asset or script from the project you will be required to share your work. Otherwise if you don’t use anything but your own stuff in the game, your game is your property. If you make any changes to the core program you are required to share those changes.

Another unknown open source middleware engine which is probably the fore runner of BigWorlds. LOT of down sides to this one but worthy of a ranking. Has very similar features to BWT but is very difficult to understand. Does not work directly out of the box so you have to fix code in the encryption system. I got a working demo running after a couple days of debugging. It has unlimited world size because it is designed for the web and servers scattered across the globe. Has its own built in database which make it a level of persistence above a normal MMO engine. Made for real-world simulations which persist even after it is shut down. You have to manually reset the world.

The bigger downside of this engine is it was build with SDL as its video driver so it is not very nice looking. With a little elbow grease and some working knowledge of C++ one could build a truly unique game. This engine will fall under abandoned code soon and will be available for a new developer and new license description. Probably fall into public domain MIT or ZLIB. Once it hit this status a prime candidate graphics engine would be Irrlicht.

Delta3D is not really a MMORPG engine but has the capability. Has one of the best animation blending available. It is built more for military simulations. I have tested this one out several years ago and was actually impressed with OSG as it base graphic engine. It is another complex system that will require a lot of study but this engine can pull off some amazing stuff.

I am still working on my MMORPG (KoW) It is painfully slow because I always reach a point where the design just doesn’t fit the engine or the team seems to fall apart. Seems I lack the skills to movativate people or people seem to think that a MMORPG will build itself in a few months. Building one of these is HARD work. Much harder than a real job. In fact somedays I feel like just giving up after a setback. I must be a glutton for punishment maybe?

Learn about the profession first hand before you think its all a bowl of cherries.

If you really want to build a MMORPG and you think you have what it takes to do this then join some of the teams that are using these engines and learn something. Most of the guys and gals working on these projects have master degrees and are working toward their doctorial and they have vast knowledge that is essential to your success. There are many many hats to wear in a game development cycle and a MMORPG has many many more hats than a single player game.

Cry engine indie at the time I tested it was not very stable. I had problems even getting a basic block into it without a CDT. If one bought the full commercial package I am sure this would work for a MMORPG but the requirement for this list is low cost and good performance engine. Cry fails on low cost for a commercial game.

For a zone based indie game Unreal engine is fantastic. Only testing I had was UDK so I did not have the source to evaluate beyond that. With UDK it would be possible to make a (somewhat MMO) reason I say this is because each server would be very limited on the number of CCU. Some of the issues with both engines is the fact they are not built to stream areas out of the box. Similar to HE they tend to stutter on the boundary crossing when using the seamless design.

I did hear that Unreal had a atlas program but I haven't seen it in action.

Unity has a atlas and background streaming in the professional package so if either of these engines used the paged method I would expect the game to run a bit more smoothly.

The nice thing about Esenthel and BigWorlds and for that matter Multiverse is they are streaming engines. They are designed form the ground up for massive sized worlds. (although the bug in Multiverse needs fixed becasue it loads the terrain data but does not unload it which means you run out of memory). They break the data up such a way that background loading and unloading are in their own threads so you never get a big jump in FPS unless you screw with making models too many vertices or just plain to big for AOI.

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Using TGEA, a discontinued engine from GarageGames. LOL, this is not a plug. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Besides, these licenses dried up even if you did want it.

Modified to support server clusters up to 99 physical machines per world, MMORPG framework middleware modified for application as a first person magic-melee medieval shooter.

I have seen a lot of it and your doing a great job with this engine.

I still have TGEA. :) I was considering writing a MySQL driver at one time and make a engine paging system. Reason I didn't like I said in another board was the time involved. LOL well, time now is 3 years later and I am still struggling so WTF I should have just done it back in 2010.

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Originally posted by ArChWind

I still have TGEA. :) I was considering writing a MySQL driver at one time and make a engine paging system. Reason I didn't like I said in another board was the time involved. LOL well, time now is 3 years later and I am still struggling so WTF I should have just done it back in 2010.

Yeah, TGEA needs some love and it is MIT now.

PG had some serious code gods at one time. The middleware turns TGEA into a Python library, with the client and servers all Python apps. They used PySQL as a pipeline to interact with SQLite (a tiny SQL-like system). Makes for a very clean db integration, but unfortunately the dbs aren't centralized so spreading over multiple physical servers is a mess.

There's a T3D alpha of the middleware, but it's in quite sad condition. A group of coders (people you probably have heard of) got it to alpha, then gave up and went to another engine (can't blame them). It's version hell because GG went for over a year without a stabile release (sold to new owners then bankrupt). Just getting the middleware solid would easily take a year.

So I stayed with 171. Other than a few missing audio features, it works. Sort of. *sigh*

One thing I do know after all of this. I could never work with an engine that didn't offer full source. Locked into someone else's binary wouldn't cut it. I have too much fun ripping it apart and rebuilding :-)

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Unless you need a truly out-of-the-box solution, I'd say the Unreal engines are best for MMO's, assuming your programmers are capable of building out the middleware. It's a great trade-off between using a packaged engine like Hero, and building one from the ground up yourself.

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Cryengine is garbage if archeage uses that i would stay away from the game it is NOT ment for MMOs developers keep using these single player or FPS game engines thinking they can make it work but they cannot and the same goes for the hero engine.

Best MMO engine ? Wait for it Forgelight from SOE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgelight_Engine

Just play planetside 2 once no lag nothing the engine is perfect for massive open world MMOs with hundreds of people on the same screen. Go try and get 400 people in the same area using hero or cryengine.

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Actually the 30% royalties on Hero Engine are not that bad. You have to think what they offer, hosting the servers so that could cut down on some huge costs and they are prepared to prmote your title. So really a 30% cut is not that steep considering what it could cost you down the line to just run servers and promote your game.

Plus the fact if the game does well you can buy a none royalties version to cut out the middle man and host your own server and cover your own promotion. To be honest the whole Hero Engine platform is done quite well and would cut down lots of time compared to some of the other engines you listed.

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I know the story well. :)

I don’t knock TGEA and all its capability but making a MMO backend with SQLite was a big mistake. It was a major stumbling block and why I would not invest in it to begin with. SQLite is used in Esenthel too and one of the downsides of it is SQLite is not designed for realtime access which leads to some unusual problems when persistence is being implemented with over 100 players. The thing that makes Esenthel different though is the fact you CAN write your own DB manager and your own Network manager without the source. I have discussed the ultimate package and it is a good investment once a game starts making income. As for indie starting up though it is better in the pipeline, is capable of massive worlds out of the box without additional third party programs.

Unlike you, I am not worried about using a engine without source as a starter MMO because if it is successful, which in many cases is a BIG if, you can always buy the source and upgrade your game.

I been working on BW for awhile and testing 2.1 release as a potential candidate. Before with 1.9 there was no way in gods green earth I was going to consider it because of XML and the fact persistence is only in memory because XML is a memory only database. Could you even fathom what would happen if your database died when your server choked because it was all in memory and not on disk? Sure your players database could be MySQL but the fact that the write back didn’t happen in some cases you would corrupt the data and have a LOT of pissed off players. Beings its python means implementing stuff is fairly easy.

MySQL backend makes it pro packaged. What I really like about it is the scalability is better than MV which you probably know I really like MV for the scaling. I was trying to get FoHO to consider it and even offered assistance. but that went away sadly.

Not trying to sell you the engine. LOL. Just think you may find it interesting for your next project.

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There technically isn't an "MMO Engine" there is a graphics renderer and then a collection of many tools and systems to turn a multiplayer game into an expansive persistant online game. People sometimes tend to think this game or that game failed so it must be Hero Engine, it must be Unity, it must be Cryengine, etc. All 3 of those engines used properly and more importantly used toward their strengths can make very successful games. If you want 400 people in one spot, you have design your game content from the ground up to support that style of play otherwise you are not going to get that. A few distinct choices in design and that number gets cut down drastically and is design choice more so than an engine limitation. Not to say that some engines might be better at it from a technologial standpoint, but they aren't as far off as most people want to think.

Obviously, a little bias toward Hero Engine as that was the path we chose and would chose it again even with all the alternatives out there now (would probably still evaluate some of the new ones and didn't get to dig into esenthel much as it was fledging at the time), but at the end of the day building an MMO is an insanely complex project and building the toolset from scratch even more so. Having a something like BigWorld or Hero to take care of some of the more complex parts is helpful and you can spend your time on development versus building the toolset.

As far as Hero goes the 30% is a tad steep, but as mentioned it does include server hosting/support fees as well so those costs are inclusive as part of that so it brings that number down a bit as you would normally have to pony up that money for the instrastructure. We design our world in a grid design as their seamless support works fairly well for that, but we do it in a slightly different way than most people are doing it as we have scripts that automate it making the process fairly quick and can theoretically keep expanding the size and scope of the world out as far as we needed. BigWorld when we evaluated it was restricted to 8-10km in a single heightmap even though it was chunked. That might be old news now of course as everything is constantly moving forward and updating. From a collaborative standpoint I haven't seen anything like it out there right now and was one of the major aspects that allows for rapid development as there is no nightly builds or fighting with repos to deal with. Both were pretty solid products though, but not something you just jump into and expect to have a shovel made MMO ready to go.

That being said, the options available now compared to 4 or 5 years ago is night and day and it will be interesting to see what is available in another 4 or 5 years.

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Originally posted by Woopin

Actually the 30% royalties on Hero Engine are not that bad. You have to think what they offer, hosting the servers so that could cut down on some huge costs and they are prepared to prmote your title. So really a 30% cut is not that steep considering what it could cost you down the line to just run servers and promote your game.

Plus the fact if the game does well you can buy a none royalties version to cut out the middle man and host your own server and cover your own promotion. To be honest the whole Hero Engine platform is done quite well and would cut down lots of time compared to some of the other engines you listed.

Well the fine print says you pay for the bandwidth and bandwidth of a blade can get really expensive sometimes exceeding 100 dollars a gigabyte since there is no set fee you could technacilly be paying another 25 to 50% for the use. There no clear fee stated anywhere in the EULA so it is wide open to HOW much you will pay per user or per Gigabyte.

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Originally posted by joshuahalls

There technically isn't an "MMO Engine" there is a graphics renderer and then a collection of many tools and systems to turn a multiplayer game into an expansive persistant online game. People sometimes tend to think this game or that game failed so it must be Hero Engine, it must be Unity, it must be Cryengine, etc. All 3 of those engines used properly and more importantly used toward their strengths can make very successful games. If you want 400 people in one spot, you have design your game content from the ground up to support that style of play otherwise you are not going to get that. A few distinct choices in design and that number gets cut down drastically and is design choice more so than an engine limitation. Not to say that some engines might be better at it from a technologial standpoint, but they aren't as far off as most people want to think.

Obviously, a little bias toward Hero Engine as that was the path we chose and would chose it again even with all the alternatives out there now (would probably still evaluate some of the new ones and didn't get to dig into esenthel much as it was fledging at the time), but at the end of the day building an MMO is an insanely complex project and building the toolset from scratch even more so. Having a something like BigWorld or Hero to take care of some of the more complex parts is helpful and you can spend your time on development versus building the toolset.

As far as Hero goes the 30% is a tad steep, but as mentioned it does include server hosting/support fees as well so those costs are inclusive as part of that so it brings that number down a bit as you would normally have to pony up that money for the instrastructure. We design our world in a grid design as their seamless support works fairly well for that, but we do it in a slightly different way than most people are doing it as we have scripts that automate it making the process fairly quick and can theoretically keep expanding the size and scope of the world out as far as we needed. BigWorld when we evaluated it was restricted to 8-10km in a single heightmap even though it was chunked. That might be old news now of course as everything is constantly moving forward and updating. From a collaborative standpoint I haven't seen anything like it out there right now and was one of the major aspects that allows for rapid development as there is no nightly builds or fighting with repos to deal with. Both were pretty solid products though, but not something you just jump into and expect to have a shovel made MMO ready to go.

That being said, the options available now compared to 4 or 5 years ago is night and day and it will be interesting to see what is available in another 4 or 5 years.

You're one of the lucky ones Josh, you bought the engine at a higher price so you are not going to get hit very hard 10% but for the people comming into HE the 30% pluse the bandwidth make it lower on my listing. It is a fantastic engine but I think end costs are a bit to steep and for my project it would not coorporate. :).

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Originally posted by ArChWind

You're one of the lucky ones Josh, you bought the engine at a higher price so you are not going to get hit very hard 10% but for the people comming into HE the 30% pluse the bandwidth make it lower on my listing. It is a fantastic engine but I think end costs are a bit to steep and for my project it would not coorporate. :).

Did I miss this bandwidth cost aspect somewhere? I don't see anything about it, but I don't read every little thing mentioned. Do you have a link to what you are talking about?

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Originally posted by joshuahalls

Originally posted by ArChWind

You're one of the lucky ones Josh, you bought the engine at a higher price so you are not going to get hit very hard 10% but for the people comming into HE the 30% pluse the bandwidth make it lower on my listing. It is a fantastic engine but I think end costs are a bit to steep and for my project it would not coorporate. :).

Did I miss this bandwidth cost aspect somewhere? I don't see anything about it, but I don't read every little thing mentioned. Do you have a link to what you are talking about?

http://www.heroengine.com/heroengine/licensing-options/

That is the current options that changed in December as they have a progressive plan based on seat counts.

Wish I could access it but on Thursday I asked to remove my world off teh server. It was becasue I was not going to use it anymore. The EULA that was posted on mmorpgmaker.com some two years ago stated it and the agreement we click on at HE says you pay for the services. Ask Cooper.

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This is back from 2011 mind you, but was during the 30% royalty bit. I don't recall anything changing since then beyond the seat counts as that would be a rather drastic change to EULA and just cannot be snuck in.

* We use Visa PlaySpan to provide 84 billing methods in 122 countries. They handle all the money. They handle the initial purchase of the subscription, and then using the same systems will handle charging your players. After financial transaction fees (credit card, mobile, facebook coins, paypal) you get 70 percent, we get 30 percent, and we have to pay all the costs for licenses and servers and bandwidth, so it's more like we get 12 percent, which all of a sudden feels like we are working way too hard for only 12 percent.

Obviously he is making numbers up there, but they pick up the infrastructure bandwidth cost and that is a rather variable number based on design choices and downloading of client data.

Plus bandwidth is nowhere even close to $100 for a GB. It isn't even that for a TB. Maybe if you are talking 1 Gbit unmetered connection, but you would be consuming a lot of bandwidth at that point.

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Originally posted by joshuahalls

This is back from 2011 mind you, but was during the 30% royalty bit. I don't recall anything changing since then beyond the seat counts as that would be a rather drastic change to EULA and just cannot be snuck in.

* We use Visa PlaySpan to provide 84 billing methods in 122 countries. They handle all the money. They handle the initial purchase of the subscription, and then using the same systems will handle charging your players. After financial transaction fees (credit card, mobile, facebook coins, paypal) you get 70 percent, we get 30 percent, and we have to pay all the costs for licenses and servers and bandwidth, so it's more like we get 12 percent, which all of a sudden feels like we are working way too hard for only 12 percent.

Obviously he is making numbers up there, but they pick up the infrastructure bandwidth cost and that is a rather variable number based on design choices and downloading of client data.

So is is that why so many games have such disasterous launches? They are giving power to initial bandwidth to a 3rd party company that gives them as little as possible so then there are horrible queues?

Free to play = content updates for the cash shop. Buy to play = content updates for the cash shop. Subscription = Actual content updates!